Word.ws English Dictionary

get one's wires crossed

get one's wires crossed verb: to get confused or mixed up about another person's intentions; to misunderstand one another.

Verb

get one's wires crossed (third-person singular simple present gets one's wires crossed, present participle getting one's wires crossed, simple past got one's wires crossed, past participle (UK) got one's wires crossed or (US) gotten one's wires crossed)

  1. (idiomatic, intransitive) To get confused or mixed up about another person's intentions; to misunderstand one another.
    • We got our wires crossed so I went to the bus station and she headed to the railway station.
    • "TELEPHONE MATCH, 1949. White gets his wires crossed from trying to call on two variations at once and picks the wrong number in Black who cuts him off short."1949 November, “Chess Caviar”, in Chess Review

Forms of get one's wires crossed

third-person singular presentgets one's wires crossed
present participlegetting one's wires crossed
pastgot one's wires crossed
past participle UKgot one's wires crossed
past participle USgotten one's wires crossed

Origin of get one's wires crossed

From the early days of telephony, when touching wires could reroute conversations.

Questions about get one's wires crossed

What does get one's wires crossed mean?
Get one's wires crossed means to get confused or mixed up about another person's intentions; to misunderstand one another.
What part of speech is get one's wires crossed?
Get one's wires crossed is a verb.
What is the past tense of get one's wires crossed?
The past tense of get one's wires crossed is got one's wires crossed.

Words near get one's wires crossed in the dictionary

  1. get one's ticket punched
  2. get one's tits in a wringer
  3. get one's undies in a bundle
  4. get one's way
  5. get one's wig split
  6. get one's wires crossed
  7. get one's ya-yas out
  8. get oneself together
  9. get onto
  10. get open
  11. get out

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: get one's wires crossed (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-get one's wires crossed.ogg.

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